


Not with a bang or a whimper

by Hope



Category: Torchwood
Genre: AU, M/M, five things, fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five places Ianto's story went next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not with a bang or a whimper

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to wenchpixie for gleeful encouragement and ideas-bouncing, rexluscus for beta and amand_r for advice! For the [](http:)flashfic_hub S3 challenge.

**Day 5**

"How'd it happen, then?" Owen asks into the silence, obviously deeming Ianto calm enough now to do with a bit of ribbing. "Death by decaf? There's not a mark on you!"

He sounds mildly unimpressed but not really vicious; Ianto gets the sense that Owen is actually _glad_ to see him, now that the bulk of explaining has been done with an utterly straight face. The feeling's reciprocal, but Ianto's certainly not about to reveal that either. He lets a bit of genuine smugness creep into his expression, though. Owen's right. At least his suit is still impeccable.

"Lethal gas."

"Always told Jack he could do with more ventilation down in that cubby hole."

"Don't be ridiculous," Suzie says drily, eyeing Ianto up and down as they walk. "He's fully clothed, isn't he?"

"So is this what the afterlife really is, then?" Ianto diverts. "Office gossip about our deaths rather than our lives?"

"Well no doubt you'd find it pretty boring if that were the case," Owen says. "Not that I _want_ any juicy details about your torrid affair with Captain Can't-keep-it-in-his-pants, but we'd have more luck squeezing moisture out of a stone."

"And it's not strictly an office," Suzie says. "I realise it might be hard for you to comprehend, but there's more to working for Torchwood than skyscrapers _or_ underground lairs." Which is fairly obvious, given the parquetry floor they're currently strolling along. The long corridor is lined with massive oil paintings, their heavy, ornate frames weighed down with dust and the canvasses themselves too filthy to see the subjects of the artworks. Ianto's yet to see any windows.

"You still call yourself Torchwood, then." He can't quite keep the mild scorn out of his tone, though he suspects that that's more to do with-- Well. Calm or not, this isn't _quite_ what he was expecting. "I can't imagine you've had much contact with Buckingham Palace, recently."

Suzie gives him one of the looks she's always been so good at, and even with several years distance and some emotional growth it still makes Ianto feel like shrinking under the nearest desk.

"Of course we are," she says. They've reached the end of the corridor and she turns to face him again, leaning her back against the closed door in front of them. It hides from view the bloody gape of the back of her head again, and Ianto feels himself relaxing incrementally from an unease he hadn't realised he'd felt. She leans back a little further, pushing the door open. "Welcome to Torchwood Four."

 

Seeing Toshiko again is what eventually sets him off. Aside from the more aggressive freak-out upon arrival, of course; this is more a proper, embarrassing cry. He'd not come to peace with losing her and Owen, not really, and now _this?_

At least it happens when they're away from the others. Not that there are that many others. There _should_ be more, Ianto's seen the records.

"There are more," Tosh tells him while he's still not looking at her, face pressed against her blouse while she runs her fingers lightly through his hair. The familiar calm intelligence of her tone is almost more soothing than her touch. "In other parts of the house. On missions."

It makes more sense when he finds out just how big the house is. He's not entirely convinced that it is a house, strictly speaking; an endless catacomb of rooms with no entry or exit. He can't find the room he first arrived in again, either.

But it's easy for he and Tosh to get away and talk without an audience. Aside from the wound in her belly, she still _looks_ alive; even Owen looks more alive than he did in those strained weeks after he died the first time.

"But it hasn't always been--" He's about to say _here_, but is still unsure of where _here_ is. Unsure as to whether he _wants_ to know. "--Like this, has it? There were records in the Archives at the Hub--Torchwood Four _did_ exist."

"It still exists." Tosh smiles down at him wryly. "You're right, though, it did exist in Great Britain, up until the 1800s. Something happened then, something came through the Rift, even; something to offset the... the technology that does this, keeps us here."

Her frustration is obvious, and familiar in a way that makes Ianto's heart hurt, though mainly in gratitude for her presence. Part of him wonders if Lisa's here, somewhere, and whether her appearance would indicate the point at which she'd died, as it does with Owen and Suzie, despite their respective resurrections. Was it when she was dismembered, or partially converted? Lobotomised? And the rest of Torchwood One? He has to stop thinking about it; the house grows in his conception and becomes more gruesome than comforting. Because it is comforting, obscurely, in the small pocket of deceased Three operatives.

The records are surprisingly well-kept, though (it's egotism, Ianto supposes, that the only archival skills he has faith in are his own), made all the more accessible by the lack of central command that Four runs under. They still don't indicate just _what_ expelled Four from the space-time continuum as they knew it back then, but surprisingly enough, they do reveal that it was always _staffed_ the same way.

Four's foundational documentation is more like a manifesto than a charter. It reads bitterly, with all the paranoia and possessiveness of the Institute that Ianto always rationalised as necessary to carry out the ruthless protection it existed for. The manifesto itself takes the death-or-retcon escape clause of Torchwood a step further; _death_ being not so much an end as an escape to a destination as threatening to Torchwood in its mystery as the depths of space. Another chance for operatives to cause damage with what they knew; or, more opportunistically, a way for them to continue to serve. Perpetually.

Ianto finds it somewhat ironic that even knowing this, even removed from the domination of the institute, they continue to serve rather than revolt. In part, perhaps, because it seems there _is_ no escape from this--no ultimate death, no way to continue--but also because it's a reprieve.

He still exists. In body and spirit, and memory--he's still Ianto Jones. He still remembers Jack. Perhaps this _is_ the afterlife. A reward rather than perdition.

Time passes as it always has. Not much of it does, though, before everything changes again, and as the most recent arrivals from the twenty-first century, the three of them get to be the first out the front door. This is decided, of course, when they manage to orientate themselves enough to ascertain the time in which they've appeared: 2009. Six months after Ianto's death.

"I don't understand it," Tosh says when they're stood just outside the front door. The sun is so bright, and Owen stands a few steps away, enjoying voraciously; breathing deep and tilting his head back to bask in the light. Tosh continues to fiddle with the device in her hands, not looking up. "It's nothing that _we_ did, it's almost like... it's righted itself again. Whatever tipped us out of existence before has just... tipped back." She blinks rapidly, looking at their surrounds for the first time.

It's a generic, luscious, British green all around them; they're somewhere in the countryside but Ianto has no idea where. He doesn't really care, to be honest, just as long as there's a means of getting back to Cardiff as soon as possible. The world still _exists_ so surely the 456 were defeated--or submitted to. As horrific as the thought of that outcome might be, Ianto still feels a thrill of confidence, of anticipation. They _survive_, it's what they do; Torchwood _is_ perpetual, the very existence of Four has proven that to him. Or would have been the proof, if his faith in Jack weren't already enough.

Ianto finds himself grinning. _Jack_. He and Gwen are probably already rebuilding the Hub; Ianto feels just a little disappointed that he hasn't been around to have his say on the blue prints. Jack had always seemed somewhat set on a hot tub, but the ancient plumbing concreted into the walls had always prevented him.

There's probably still time. It's only been six months, after all. Ianto doubts they've even replaced him yet.

Or Tosh and Owen. Ianto can't stop smiling, or blinking against the brilliant sunlight. "Come on, then," he says to them. "Might as well start walking."

*

**Day 1,081**

If the Hub had still been whole and occupied things might have turned out differently, though whether that would have resulted in Ianto observing (haunting) and eventually moving on, or lingering (haunting) while clinging to a more corporeal concept of his humanity, he'll never really know.

As it is, he finds himself aware again--and perhaps that's the bottom line of existence; awareness--in a place bereft of human life. The spaces around him are familiar in their resonance, his sense of them not based on sight or sound or touch but a sub-etheric vibration of _home_.

He's not alone, though. Even as his conception of the ruins of the Hub expand to every splintered wire, every fragment of rubble, where it is and where it ought to be, he becomes aware of another sentience. As he sifts his awareness between the particles that form the top layer of destruction and further down into the Hub the sensation becomes stronger, a beacon of life pulsing out its own awareness in return. The lower levels of the Hub are virtually undamaged, sturdy enough to withstand the power of the blast, though they too echo with the lack of human life.

Ianto follows the thrum of consciousness through the empty spaces and discovers her.

Mainframe.

Nothing has touched him since he died but now she does, reaching out in query, and when contact is made he forgets, for a stretch outside of time, that he was ever anything but this. He becomes pure information; his understanding of the Hub around him expands like a big bang because not only can he sense it but he can _control it_, tiny bytes of data feeding back and forth throughout the Hub like cells through an infinitely complex cardiovascular system, each sensor and circuit unfurling in his awareness.

When he was alive, Ianto had never much thought about her organic roots beyond brief speculation, but now he suspects that her non-artificial sentience is what allows their synergy to happen. How else could a computer be lonely?

Without a human presence to prune back the rhizomatic growth of their consciousness they expand, sensors evolving to send out more delicate tendrils than blunt friend-or-foe detection, measuring the fertility of the abandoned space in each particle and spore, calculating and modulating the likelihood of life. They test their reach, stretching out the more practical limbs of their technology, ever aware of the tickle and crawl around the upper levels--a mass of jumbled confusion to Mainframe that Ianto helps her understand more with recollection of flames and twisted metal, broken rock--as humans slowly excavate.

In the early days they release a series of passageways out into the numbed reach of old tunnels and sewers; Janet escapes via the path provided but later returns with a pack; the weevils sniff warily around the abandoned spaces, nesting in the dim shelter of the stone far below the workers above. Mainframe enjoys their presence, the bluntness of their company keeping her occupied. There's no harm in it, really, and ultimately it allows Ianto to keep a strand of autonomy amidst their symbiosis. He focuses on keeping the undamaged areas of Torchwood Three's archives preserved, controlling the atmosphere and strengthening the seals.

It's 1,077 days since Ianto died when their sensors flare, and it's almost like pain, like the beam of a spotlight onto eyes long accustomed to the dark. The people on the surface have broken through, and Mainframe acquiesces when offered a valid security code to enter the lower levels.

Their sensors wash over the visitor, sampling life signs and DNA, subtly altering the atmospheric conditions in the subterranean spaces even as they connect to the wider networks and databases, seeking to match biology to records. It's a woman, and the mere presence of another person sends Ianto's own humanity flooding back as his memory is stimulated into more concrete recollection. She's carrying her own tech, and they tap into the feed of her communications devices, ear piece and lenses, input translating almost instantly.

Ianto sees what she sees, hears her in the vibration her voice causes in the particles of the still air.

_Gwen, I'm in. Are you still getting the signal from the lenses?_

The ear piece is Torchwood issue, so it's effortless for them to capture its stream as well. _Yup. Though it's coming through pretty dark, I can barely see anything._

The woman laughs. _Don't blame me, it is bloody dark down here. Where the hell's the light switch?_

Life signs pick up, heart rate and breathing increasing and the chemical makeup of the air changes as pheromones are released through sweat.

_Sorry, love, the bulbs must have gone with the force of the explosion. Usually it'd light up as soon as you got in._

The woman moves slowly through the Hub, her path directed by Gwen toward the arsenal, pausing every so often to input data into her PDA as she stumbles over long-dormant equipment. She's just entered the firing range when Mainframe's reforging of Toshiko's long-established hacking paths returns data from the government's secure networks.

`LOIS HABIBA`

The woman stops where she is as the text appears at the foot of her vision. _Gwen, are you hailing me? Is everything all right?_

The concern in Gwen's voice reverberates through the tinny earpiece speaker, data on the strains of it spiking and rolling through their sensors. _That wasn't my hail. Lois, I think you should get out of there now._

There's a weevil in the corridor outside the firing range, comfortable in its domain; the frightened scent of a single human has drawn it towards Lois. Ianto closes the door to the firing range before it can get close enough to even see inside. Lois gives a shout of alarm, life signs leaping upward and the streaming picture from her lenses rocks and reels as she runs to the door and pounds on it, beam of light from the torch in her fist slicing upwards. _Gwen!_

_Something's happening, something's controlling the power in the Hub, it's not me, Lois, just hold on..._

Mainframe works to redirect the corridor, subtly suggesting the weevil move on but Lois's noise has caught its attention now, and it lingers around the sealed entry to the firing range, hunching and listing, snarling its interest.

Ianto redirects more power to the firing range, flitting through the filaments of the lighting, and Lois wheels around as he illuminates one of the caricatured weevil targets, dragging her attention to it; she responds with a shriek.

_Gwen! What the fuck?_

_Lois, calm down--_

_Are you seeing this?_

The light over the weevil target flickers.

`BEHIND THE DOOR`

Lois shoves herself away from the door abruptly, stumbling back into the range. She whimpers wordlessly as she catches sight of the illuminated target again.

_Lois, I don't want to alarm you but it's right. I've managed to hook into the Hub's sensors at last and you do _not_ want to go out there. Right now, you're in the safest place you can be._

Ianto dims the light on the target a little, feeds the energy into the halogens above the firing area, illuminating more of the space. Hesitantly, Lois thumbs off her torch.

_That's not me, either._ Gwen's voice is low with worry.

Lois takes a deep breath. _Can you hear me, then?_

Ianto recognises the particular timbres and tonal variance enough to know that she's not addressing Gwen.

`YES`

Drawn by the hunting pheromones of the first, the rest of the weevil pack lope into the corridor, sniffing around the foot of the door, following Lois's trail back in the direction she came from. Ianto and Mainframe close off the corridor before they can get very far, sealing them in. When they realise, they start lowing in confusion.

_Gwen, get me the bloody hell out of here!_

_Hold on--_

With the pack contained, Ianto disarms the firing range's service entry; the door unlocks with a heavy _thunk_; exit light humming to life above it. Lois steps towards it hesitantly.

_Did you do that?_

_Not me, Lois, I don't know--_

_Not you._

`YES`

Lois walks towards it, with slightly more confidence, now. _Is it safe? Can I trust you?_

`YES`

The lights in the firing range dim behind her as she exits, power redirected to the narrow hall ahead.

_Who are you?_

`JONES`, rolls up on the foot of Lois's vision. `IANTO JONES`.

*

**Day 438,121**

The first thing Ianto's aware of is a crushing, burning pain seizing his chest; he can't breathe and he can't see and every movement of his body incites a stabbing ache through every joint and muscle. He thinks he's screaming, his jaw and throat ache, but the sound of it is absent in the clatter and chatter he can hear around him, muffled as if he's underwater.

The pain abates, though, and as time passes and his body does that peculiar yet infinitely welcome thing where the agony is filed away from immediate memory, becoming ephemeral in his recollection.

"Can you hear me?"

He tries to open his eyes again, to locate the owner of the unfamiliar voice, but all he can see is a smoky darkness. He raises a hand to touch his face but his arm barely lifts before dropping again from the strain of holding up its own weight. A dry, cracked sound scrapes his throat.

Something is seriously wrong. Ianto tries to call up what he remembers, but it's like the synapses in his brain have been immersed in icy water, cringing and seizing away from the sudden stimulation. Something _must_ have happened. He can barely move. He can't _see_.

"Subject is conscious, though not responding directly to verbal contact." Something touches his face and his reflexes are too slow to flinch away from it. "Corneas appear damaged from the cryopreservation process." The matter-of-fact tone of voice downshifts into a frustrated mutter. "Prehistoric refriger-blanking-ration... Never mind, love, we'll get you sorted out."

There's the unexpected sound of a quick hydraulic hiss and then he's abruptly warmer, awareness being washed back down into his own body, sensation of the world on the other side of his skin receding.

The next time he wakes up he can't see because something's covering his eyes, preventing him from opening them, and he can feel it--soft, barely-weighted fabric that clings around the back of his skull as well. He manages to lift his hand a little higher this time before his muscles give out; still, he's able to form a trembling fist which he knocks against the side of his thigh. He can feel that, too.

"Can you hear me now?"

He's not restrained, or in any pain, and the voice is more gentle than threatening. "Yes," he tries to say, but it comes out a barely audible wisp of air between his teeth. He tries to swallow, and the sides of his throat cling together drily. Ianto concentrates on keeping his breathing steady and then dips his chin down a little, the closest he can get to a nod.

"Oh, _stellar_." There's the sound of shuffling, footsteps on an uncarpeted floor and the rustle of loose clothing. "They've repaired the damage to your eyes and I've just dialled down the illumination in here, so I'm going to take the mask off, now."

She appears to be waiting for a response, so Ianto makes the same chin-dipping movement again. Then he feels the brush of fingers against his face and the fabric's being lifted away. His eyelids feel swollen, gummy, and the first crack of light makes him breathe in sharply. There's the trickle of moisture across his temples and he assumes it's tears until he feels how cool it is; the hands lift away from his face again and he can see--still smoky grey but definition this time, the geometric patterns of an exposed ceiling.

"Blink."

He does, and the cool moisture soothes the sting so he does it again, then opens his eyes wider. Everything is still hazy, though rapidly coming more into focus; the speaker leans over him, a shadowed face with close-cropped hair.

"Oh, blue eyes. You are a traditional lad, aren't you?" She sounds more indulgent than anything. "Must have been in the freeze for a good long while."

Cool liquid trickles into his mouth, slicking the channel of his throat enough that swallowing is more relief than discomfort. He closes his eyes again in gratitude.

"Do you remember your name?"

Ianto nods again, opens his eyes. He flexes his fingers--left hand, and right--then curls his toes, tensing to test the mobility of his ankles. He lets his gaze roam as well, over the woman sat next to him to the unfamiliar equipment poised nearby. The light's dim enough that he can't see much beyond, though there is another eye hovering over him; his own face wan and ghostly in the reflection of the convex camera lens.

He swallows again. "Where am I?" he manages, voice barely more than a rasp of paper over paper, but audible nonetheless.

"Torchwood Twelve," she says, and Ianto's becoming more aware by the second. He can't quite place her accent. "Experimental tech labs."

There's another hydraulic hiss and she looks away from him for a moment; another person appears. Another voice, another accent Ianto can't place; "I thought we agreed that contact with the subject would be scripted and controlled?"

The woman snorts. "What's he going to do, freeze himself back into the past and cause a paradox? Besides, he's Torchwood."

"We don't _know_ that. The presence of the chambers in the archives is not solid foundation for that theory." The argument sounds like an old one.

Ianto's limbs are prickling with life; the equipment whirs around him, sounds changing as he feels his body wake up, and his mind, remembering...

Torchwood _Twelve?_

The discussion goes on until he interrupts, managing a creaking sound loud enough to gain their attention again. "Three," he whispers.

"Of course you're free, you're not our prisoner--"

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Eva."

Ianto shakes his head, cutting them off again. He lifts his hand, managing to flop it down again on his chest this time, pointing up to his face. "Torchwood Three."

There's a brief pause and then the woman--Eva--makes a crowing sound of victory. "I _told_ you!"

"That still doesn't mean--"

"Yes it does. According to the charter, he has clearance."

"And according to the charter, he's fully obliged to be our subject. So don't go getting _too_ attached."

They don't seem to transport Ianto after that so much as change the room around him, and the texture of the bed beneath him. More people come and talk around him and fiddle with the equipment and he doesn't realise he's been unconscious again until he wakes again and finds he's dressed this time, and propped up a little; he can see more of the room, now. It's just as sterile and bland as the ceiling was.

Eva's sitting on a stool at the foot of the bed. She seems more subdued than she had when he first woke up, and Ianto's grateful for that. Consciousness this time has brought with it a clarity that his muddled, just-defrosted mind was lacking earlier.

"What year is it?" His voice is still rough, but at least there's some tone to it now, not just a rasp of air.

"You're around the middle of the thirty-second century, on the old Gregorian calendar," she answers. "Do you... remember when it was that you died? You said Torchwood Three, but our records don't go back--"

Ianto's nod cuts off her torrent of words. It's harder to speak, this time, throat abruptly constricted again and he closes his eyes but it doesn't shut off the unfamiliar crackle and hum of the equipment still looming around him. He does remember. Remembers... the children, the eery blue of the alien's gas chamber, the thrill of pride and fierce conviction, faith, of being stood there next to Jack.

He remembers dying.

"How about your name? Can you tell me your name?"

"Ianto Jones," he croaks. "Twenty-first century."

His name will mean nothing to her. Not if they don't even have _records_ of Torchwood Three. "Why am I here?" Recalling her _experimental tech labs_ answer of earlier, he already suspects he knows the answer.

Eva shifts, and he slides his gaze over to watch her again; she's leaning forward a little on her seat. "Your chamber came with the rest of the cargo that was shipped over when Six shut down operations. Just numbered, no name plate, and your DNA wasn't in the database so we assumed that you were from before the blackout of 2780, at the latest."

"No one else?" He's not quite sure what he's asking; doesn't have the energy to figure it out, and she seems happy to run with her own interpretation regardless of his intent.

"None that were salvageable. You were the perfect test subject, really. However you died, there was no damage to your body we couldn't correct with minor alterations to your chemical balance, and if the device failed, well then... no loss, really, is it?"

He stares at her.

She smiles, a little apologetically, but still unable to hide her excitement. "It came through the Rift--it took a few years just figure out what it was, and then a couple more to find out how to use it. Well, we had a little help. Then once we knew it was just a matter of finding someone to test it on. That's when I thought of you." She dips her head, and is grinning when she looks up again. "It's a bit embarrassing to admit now that you're sat awake in front of me, but you always did fascinate me. You know, who you are, where you came from. How you died."

He closes his eyes again. The more he comprehends how distant the past is, the closer it looms in his personal history.

As if she can read his thoughts, Eva rests a hand on his ankle. "Ianto," she says, and his name sounds odd in her twisted accent, though her sympathy is plain. "It's been over a thousand years."

*

**Day 28,342**

The last time Ianto died was when Torchwood One fell. The time since then has certainly not been the longest stretch he's been alive, but it's still long enough that the revival takes a day or two. Long enough for his body to be left alone, but not so long that he needs to claw his way out of a grave.

Still, gasping back to life alone, lungs flooding with the odour of the corpses laid out around him, instantly sparks its own kind of grief. The cold in his limbs doesn't abate, teeth chattering immediately; he's in a morgue bereft of any other living soul, just the black-plastic covered shapes of bodies laid out in rows around him. Obviously there were too many to fit into the drawers, but refrigeration was still necessary, of course. He shucks away the remains of his own black plastic chrysalis and stands, naked, beside the gurney. His body is unbroken, re-started with a jerk and kick of gears, the perennial machine. Not for the first time, Ianto thinks it should probably hurt more.

When he gets to the surface of the building Ianto realises the morgue is in a UNIT facility. He supposes that makes sense; Torchwood isn't around to claim the bodies left by an alien infraction any more. It makes it easier for him to slip away.

He spends the first few years in North Wales, in a town large enough that an unfamiliar face is not a signpost of a stranger, and remote enough that none of the road signs pointing to it include an Anglicised version of its name. The urge is to run as far away as fast as he can, but with no way of getting off Earth--and he swallows down, again, the raw thought that he'll live long enough for that escape to be possible--going underground is going to cause him less trouble than becoming an illegal immigrant somewhere.

Though, rather than alleviating the anxiety of being discovered, some judicious digging through not-so-public records only serves to compound his grief when it reveals that Torchwood Three has not been rebuilt.

Gwen is alive, though, and her family. Ianto's as well; children survived to keep the line going, a long queue of them marching down the family tree while Ianto still lingers at its roots. Of Jack there's no record, and Ianto tries to convince himself that the fact of that is better, ultimately. He'd always known it would end like this, given the short life span of Torchwood operatives especially; the chance that his death would be witnessed has always been high.

But Ianto hadn't expected the mere drop of his time with Torchwood in the river of his lifetime would come to hold such volume. He can't second-guess himself, though; it's for the best that Jack is absent, removed from his reach. Ianto's said his goodbyes, after all, and even if the ache of them is still immediate and raw, decades on, he clings to the sting of their sincerity. It _was_ the end, for him and Jack, at least. Finding out about Jack's immortality had only cemented Ianto's intentions of transience. It was far beyond him to presume his welcome would last an eternity, after all.

Once the endless political circus of blame and responsibility has subsided he moves to London, hoping once more to hide himself in the soup of humanity. The gritty metropolis is possibly the safest place to sit out the next generation or so, waiting for a time where he'll not be recognised or remembered.

Such is his lot.

The first time Ianto goes back to Cardiff is for Gwen's granddaughter's wedding. Gwen had died before Rhys, so that ruled out the possibility of attending her funeral without being recognised. As it is, he's lucky that Gwyn Williams (now Evans-Williams, he supposes) chose to get married outdoors, because he certainly didn't receive an invitation.

Global warming has steamed off the perpetual Welsh drizzle, so it's a perfect day for an outdoor ceremony, marquee set up to protect the bridal party from the harsh light of the sun on the exposed lawn within the walls of Cardiff Castle. Ianto stands in a covered stretch of wall, cool stone corridor behind him, gritty stone under his hands. When the women in white on the lawn below reach the end of their aisle and take each other's hands, Ianto looks away, looks up.

There's another man standing in the wall, the opposite side of the corner's right angle, just close enough for Ianto to recognise.

It's Jack. And he's staring right back at Ianto.

The heat of the day flushes over Ianto's skin, sweat prickling over his face. The murmur of people below become like the buzzing of insects in the summer woods, their tone low and ubiquitous. Ianto breathes in and holds it, tasting the exhaust from the busy road on the other side of the wall even as the chill of it burns in his lungs, cold from the stone that had held it, still in this corridor for so long.

On reflection, his lack of foresight on the matter of eternity is one that merits a degree of embarrassment. To be fair, though, living through the development of human civilisation without any non-linear technology means that he hasn't much considered the repercussions of existing in the same universe as space and time travel. Not personally, not outside of Torchwood, at the very least. He'd not thought far enough ahead to consider that he might bump into Jack again.

What it comes down to is a wave of dizzying panic washing over him, overwhelming an unmistakable surge of relief. It's too much, though, and the main thought as he sees Jack coming towards him is that he doesn't want to make a scene.

Jack catches up to him in a ruined cluster of stonework, the result of a civil terrorist attack twenty years earlier, rather than the ravages of time. Still, the grass has grown up around where the city has decided not to repair it, papery white daisies scattering the green like confetti.

Jack's still staring, stance poised several paces away, blocking Ianto's exit. "Do you know who I am?"

The urge to roll his eyes is strong, called up again by Jack's presence, an old habit that has his throat constricting in recollection. "Of course I do." He swallows. "Jack."

Jack's eyes close in a long blink, chest swelling as he breathes deep. The line of Jack's mouth remains grim, and Ianto struggles to keep his hands still and relaxed at his sides, not to cross his arms tightly over his chest, turn his body away. Or do just the opposite.

"And what year?"

Ianto gestures vaguely in the direction of the castle lawns, adopting an expression of mild exasperation. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Jack takes another step closer and Ianto rocks a little involuntarily, as if the increased proximity sends out echoes of a literal force. There's nowhere to go, though, unless he wants to abandon all dignity and clamber up the craggy stone behind him. He might even fall off and kill himself. That would answer Jack's questions.

"How did you get here? When... How?" Jack gets close enough that his eyes dart back and forth as he fiercely holds Ianto's gaze, but he stops still a pace or two away as if the tension radiating from Ianto's body is physically repelling him.

"I'm not..." How to tell Jack that the control he's ineptly trying to keep over his response to Ianto's presence is pointless? That Ianto is not younger than the day he died in Jack's arms, nor than the day he first begged Jack for a job; that there's no risk here of destroying some concept of paradoxical innocence in that respect.

"Linearly," Ianto says at last, looking away. He can't see any people through the gaping stone behind Jack, just a long, velvet stretch of lawn leading to the fuzzier mound supporting the Keep. "I've been in London for eighty years."

The grip of Jack's hand on his jaw is like a brand, then, forcing Ianto's gaze back, Jack's face blazing now in the openness of his shock. Ianto can't look away again.

"And... for you?"

"Two hundred and thirty," Jack rasps.

Ianto's breath catches; like the physical contact with Jack sends a direct current into his chest. _Two hundred and thirty_, nearly three times as long as Ianto's been mired in his own isolation, caught in a constant battle between the conviction in his cynicism and regret.

It's with a kind of helplessness that he gives into it now. Jack's here, Jack's hand slipping down to rest against the leaping pulse in Ianto's throat and Jack _knows_. Ianto is uncovered, revealed, this responsibility of _taking care of Jack_ stretched out into his fear of imposing so obvious and abruptly meaningless. Ianto lifts his chin and then Jack's mouth is on his, and Ianto can't remember exactly _why_ he decided selfishness should lie by the wayside in order to forgo an eternity of this.

The kiss is fierce at first, Jack's lips and tongue demanding Ianto yield with more certainty than Jack had sought answers with, and Ianto opens for it, as willing as ever to take anything Jack has to give him, knowing that the well and variety of Jack's generosity is unending, even if Jack himself will deny it. Jack's hands ruffle the fine hair behind Ianto's ears, cradling Ianto's face, and there's a rushing sound in Ianto's ears, muffled staccato like the surge of blood just below the surface of his skin is audible. The touch of Jack's mouth gentles, allowing Ianto to return the kiss in equal measure, a liquid caress passing back and forward, tidal in its movement. Their lips cling as they part and Ianto realises what the sound is; summer breeze wafting the sound of applause back towards them from the wedding party. Gwen's granddaughter is wed.

He doesn't let go of his grip on Jack's back, and when Jack's thumb brushes his cheek high enough to tickle his eyelashes Ianto opens his eyes again.

Jack's face is very close. His chest rumbles against Ianto's when he talks, warm breath washing over Ianto's wet mouth. "When you die of old age, huh?"

"I do age," Ianto says with absolute sincerity. There are extra threads of grey in the tufts of hair near Jack's temples, invisible unless he's this close. Ianto strokes down the wind-ruffled strands with his fingers, gaze drawn from them as Jack's eyelids lower half-mast in pleasure at the touch. "Just very slowly."

"If you're that worried about losing your hair," Jack says conversationally, hooking his arms over Ianto's shoulders. "I know this great clinic. Absolute discretion. Results one hundred percent guaranteed. Of course, in the thirty-eighth century, genetic conditioning is such that more people are concerned with the loss of hair _singular_ rather than baldness, but..." Jack tilts his head, tips it back a little, far enough to focus properly on Ianto's face. "I could take you there."

Ianto watches Jack's face; the jaw angled to expose his throat, the half-hopeful and half-anxious quirk of his mouth, eyes both measuring and languid. Ianto can still read him well enough after all these decades, enough to know that Jack's not done with questioning. But apparently, there'll be time for that later.

"All right," Ianto says. Then, a little more uncertainly--he'd not been expecting time travel for a few centuries yet, after all--"What do I need to do?"

Jack's arms tighten around him, pressing them closer together as Jack reaches for his wrist strap. "Just hold on to me."

*

**Day 192**

Jack had been comparatively near the surface of the Hub when the explosion happened, so uncovering the wrist strap had been relatively easy. Especially once Gwen had brought out the alien tech scanner she'd conveniently left in her own car. It proves invaluable, really, in locating the bits of debris whose origins lie not with Earth. She feels a distant flare of guilt in having the device in her possession--not taking Torchwood tech out of the Hub outside of field missions had been one of her first lessons--which she rapidly torches and burns.

After all, she's the one who makes the rules, now.

The clean-up goes on for months, long after they've built the temporary scaffolding over the crater at the level of the Plass; Buckingham Palace seems keen to throw as much money at the cleanup as Gwen asks for, so she sets up massive floodlights peering into the depths of the wreckage, hires as much heavy machinery as necessary to clear out the worst of it.

As the bump grows, though, she becomes less adept at climbing over the rubble and so leaves the mountain-goating to others--Rhys, mainly, who's quit his job in anticipation of paternity leave. The pay rise--not to mention damages payout--that Gwen's received will be more than enough to raise their small family. In a nice house, even.

Gwen's going through the latest pile of twisted metal and burnt-out circuits that Rhys has accumulated for her when her heart catches in her chest in a sudden surge of recognition.

The coffee machine. Its surface dulled with dust, metal scored and faintly dented but remarkably intact, considering the state of some of the other pieces of equipment they've uncovered.

God, what she wouldn't do for one of Ianto's coffees right now. Saliva floods her mouth at the thought as her eyes likewise flood with tears; as if pregnancy isn't enough of an emotional rollercoaster. She is so bloody tired of _grief_.

These are more good memories than painful, though; a scrap of joy at recollection in amidst the ruins of her old life rather than merely a reminder that as Torchwood's leader, she's presently utterly desolate.

Gwen smiles and blinks rapidly, tucking the knuckle of her thumb under the cuff of her jacket and polishing a streak of shine into the silvery steel of the coffee machine. She barely has time to take in her distorted reflection in the cleared strip when the machine starts to rattle violently, steam wands hissing. Gwen struggles to retain her balance as she stumbles backwards, reaching around her for a weapon; she manages to get a firm grasp of a sizeable rock in her fist when Ianto appears.

"You..." Her grip on the rock tightens then loosens then tightens again, the weight if it wobbling on her wrist as she continues to hold it up at shoulder height, ready to throw. Which she would be able to do, if her muscles weren't all frozen in shock. "Ianto?"

Ianto smiles at her, utterly guileless. He tugs down his waistcoat and straightens his shirt sleeves in a way that's more like getting comfortable than being self-conscious.

"Hello, Gwen. I suppose this old girl is tougher than she looks after all." He looks down at the coffee machine fondly, its wands still emitting faint puffs of steam.

As far as Gwen can see, the machine's not even plugged in. She's not sure if what she needs is her gun or a very stiff drink. It's been a long time since she's had a stiff drink, after all. That's _got_ to be having an adverse affect on her mental faculties.

Abruptly, she needs to sit down. Ianto--a very solid, very real Ianto--takes her arm and helps her to the nearest chair-sized chunk of concrete. He frowns a little as he takes in the sizeable nature of her bump. "Gwen," he asks, sounding slightly less confident. "Just how long _has_ it been?"

"How long does it bloody well look like?" she snaps.

Ianto presses his lips together between his teeth. "Where's Jack?"

Gwen swallows hard. Where the bloody hell is Rhys, anyway? Someone needs to rip into Ianto, or lock him up and run a barrage of tests on him because he's bloody _dead_, isn't he? And given that, Gwen suspects she's not quite handling this situation quite as well as she should be. If she'd have known something like this would happen, she would have _prepared_.

"Gwen. Jack?"

She lifts her index finger, turning her hand to point upward; Ianto looks up in the direction of her gesture then back to her; his face shows confusion for a moment before it shifts to a long-suffering scowl with which she's very familiar, including a very recognisable eye roll.

"Sorry, Gwen," he says apologetically at her bewildered look. "Not you."

He leans forward, pressing a kiss to her cheek--she smells his cologne, and the faint scent of coffee beans, same as always--then strides back to the battered coffee machine. Crouching down alongside it, he _hmm_s to himself briefly, then with a few economical jabs of his fingers on the buttons and twist of dials the machine begins its familiar crunch-hushing noise. Only then instead of producing a perfect cup of coffee, the machine envelopes both itself and Ianto in a haze of blueish-white light.

Then the light brightens into a brilliant blur and shoots upwards, almost too fast for her eyes to follow, and Ianto's gone.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://hope.dreamwidth.org/1526360.html


	2. Day 4.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An outtake from "Not with a bang or a whimper".

The good thing about being able to track a car with an off-the-shelf laptop is that once they've left the bureaucratic cleanup of narrowly-avoided warfare to the suits in London (and really, Ianto can't fault Jack's dislike of paperwork when he can talk the world out of a situation like _that_), Ianto actually has time to locate the SUV again.

Luckily it's been abandoned rather than gutted--thank heavens for the small mercies of _joy riders_, smart enough to get through a triple deadlock but not smart enough to know the value of the car's extensive modifications.

He gets Jack to pull it up opposite Rhiannon's house with the headlights dimmed, engine idling deceptively quietly while Ianto parks Johnny's car then runs stealthily to the front door, shoving the keys through the postal slot. A light comes on upstairs while he's jogging back to the SUV, and Jack raises an eyebrow when Ianto clambers into the passenger seat, breathless.

"Not a word."

"I will meet them one day, you know."

_Over my dead body,_ Ianto thinks morbidly. He shakes his head dismissively. "Not tonight," he says, then nods ahead. "Home, James. And don't spare the horses."

Jack takes them to the Hub. Or, what's left of it. They leave the SUV in the underground car park--which hasn't even been cordoned off, so Ianto assumes the structural integrity of it is still sound--and head for the service entry. The tourist office, he knows, is destroyed, and Jack-- The explosion had occurred right under the water tower. Its absence was obvious when Ianto had peered over into the space where it ought to have been as they drove past. The door from the car park isn't damaged, however, but it won't open, security circuits no doubt well beyond fried.

Ianto's still confident, though, that most of the Hub has survived--the upper levels, which they tended to occupy predominantly, have been destroyed, of course they have. But if the explosion reached even as far as cold storage then it wouldn't have been just Jack's body parts scattered around the debris. He finds himself eminently grateful for that. The thought of seeing dismembered parts of Tosh, of Suzie, of _Lisa_ in the wreckage would have been too much to bear.

Ianto abruptly feels sick. He reaches into Jack's coat pocket for the keys, then walks back to the SUV. Moments later Jack climbs into the passenger seat. When he closes the door the dank echo of the empty car park is replaced with the amniotic cushion of silence afforded by the solid enclosure of the SUV. Ianto flexes his hands around the steering wheel. He hasn't even put the key in the ignition yet. He's exhausted, but the challenge of driving back to his flat seems insurmountable right now. He's not even sure that he _wants_ to.

He looks at Jack. Jack appears to be just as ruined as Ianto feels, looking back with a tiredness in his eyes that's several centuries beyond the exhaustion in the downturn of his mouth, the fine lines of his forehead. Ianto marvels again that Jack can think he's nothing but surface, that Jack can think that _Ianto_ can't see that he isn't. Especially when he looks at Ianto like that.

Jack tilts his head toward the back in an unspoken question. Ianto sets the deadlock again before climbing over into the back seat. There are empty beer cans on the floor and they rattle around as he toes his shoes off onto them. At least beer is the only unpleasant smell in the car; Ianto _has_ cleaned less savoury residue off the surfaces, but he draws the line at non-alien-affected human bodily fluids. Certainly not when they're from people not even a part of his _team_.

Ianto closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Jack's bootlaces whining through their eyelets and the whisper of fabric as Jack climbs over as well. Jack's weight presses down on him, and he opens his legs a little to give Jack more room to settle between them. They shift around minutely, seeking a level of comfort that might be just out of reach for two men in the back seat of a car, but eventually settle into stillness.

The crisp smell of Jack's hair product and more muzzy scent of Jack's unwashed neck fill Ianto's senses and Jack's hand cups the top of his head, protecting it from the protruding plastic of the door. The lining of Jack's coat is silky against the back of Ianto's hand, Jack's skin warm through the layers of his shirt and tee-shirt, back rising and falling as Jack breathes. Ianto pushes lightly against the movement with the tips of his fingers.

They shouldn't be comfortable, but somehow Ianto is, preserved here in this moment, this enclosure of time. Not trapped but held; between Jack's body and the car seat, within the sturdy husk of the SUV, the dim underground of the car park, the isle, the world. They can rest.


	3. Timestamp #1 - Ianto/Mainframe(/Jack)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Future timestamp for the second part - Day 1,081.

By the time Jack makes it back to Cardiff again, Roald Dahl Plass has been rebuilt--complete with memorial plaque. Obviously it's not as big a tourist draw as the mirrored thrust of the water tower had been, so there's no one else around when Jack walks over to examine it.

The motion sensor sends up a sheet of light when he gets close enough, scrolling text along it like the beginning of some cheesy science fiction film. No one died in the blast that destroyed not only public landmark but secret base, and the plaque only mentions one of those. Mainly it talks about the senseless destruction punctuating the start of a week of horror, when everything changed, not just in Cardiff but around the world.

Jack wonders where they rebuilt the Hub. He's been to Cardiff in the 25th century, and by that point they're back into high rises again, but he's not felt inclination to look up this century of time since he left it fifty years ago.

He walks around the memorial, the display dropping out of sight again as he moves out of range, and watches where he steps, measuring carefully until he's standing where the paving stone of the invisible lift used to be. The perception filter was always tied to those particular co-ordinates, not the stone especially; after all, they'd replaced its original material considerably while building the lift. His wrist strap ought to be able to tell him whether the filter is at all active; he's too impatient to wait around standing in the same spot until someone notices (or rather, doesn't notice) him.

He's fiddling with the detection settings on his wrist strap when it beeps, brief warning before the incoming hail flickers into existence several paces away. Jack's standing on the steps to the memorial, just above the dipping gradient of the new Plass, so the figure appears to be hovering in mid-air, feet planted flat at least a foot above the ground.

It's Ianto. Complete with three-piece suit, though the red tie is made faintly purple by the blueish tinge of the holo-projection. The recognition hits Jack with a jolt; it's the same suit that Ianto's wearing in the photo Jack carries in his breast pocket.

"Please identify yourself, or provide a biological or vocal sample suitable for identification purposes," the projection says pleasantly; Ianto's voice, Ianto's accent.

"What... the fuck?" Jack chokes out.

The projection of Ianto doesn't so much bat an eyelid. "Thank you. Just one moment, please."

Its expression remains blandly impassive, not unfriendly, but not... _human_. Especially the way it's not quite looking Jack in the eye; facing his direction but clearly a technological construct with no embodied autonomy, unable to independently locate and therefore maintain eye contact. It's subtly unsettling, and Jack drags his eyes away to look down at his wrist strap, stabbing fingers at it to pull more data up on the transmission; the signal is coming from somewhere in the vicinity but a surprisingly solid firewall is preventing him from tracing back the paths his data is clearly being transmitted along. He could probably work around it, but something tells him that by the time he did that, whoever is sending it--and it's not Ianto, it's _not_, no matter what this grotesque technological puppet looks like--

The figure stirs into movement in front of Jack again, and his gaze is jerked unavoidably back. It blinks, and then the polite expression shifts into a genuine smile. Or what would be genuine, if it were real. "Hello, Captain."

"Who's responsible for this?" Jack grits.

"Your arrival in Cardiff, 2067, was facilitated by a vortex manipulator model 968, which will be produced by the Time Agency in approximately 5090--"

"Who's responsible for _you?_"

The projection blinks again, and Jack feels a flutter in his belly--part nausea, part something else--when it unmistakably _smirks_. "This hail is being transmitted by Torchwood Three, who have been notified of your arrival." It pauses. "We've been wondering when you'd come back."

"We?"

"Yes."

"Jack Harkness!"

It's a sign of just how thrown he is by the projection when he's startled by the shout. He jerks around to face the direction of the call, and there's a woman jogging up the Plass from the direction of the bay, heading straight for him. She's breathless by the time she reaches him, standing with her hands on her hips and panting, staring at him appraisingly. "Captain Jack Harkness?" she asks at length.

Jack gives a brief, curt nod, in no mood for friendliness, but the woman just grins.

"Thought so," she says, then jerks her thumb over her shoulder. "They're never wrong."

"They?"

"Oh, aye," she says, looking back over her shoulder at where the projection still lingers, smiling serenely. "Though they don't usually stick around for this long." There's something strikingly familiar about the line of her jaw and the way her dark hair clings around it, bracketing the thoughtful pout of her mouth.

She looks back to him. "Gwyn Evans-Williams, present leader of Torchwood Three," she announces, gripping his hand and shaking it firmly; at the movement of the strap the projection flickers out of existence. The noise of distress Jack makes at its disappearance is entirely involuntary.

"Who's responsible for this?" he says again, growling over the apparent surprise in her expression and thinking _bloody Torchwood_ with a kind of sickened familiarity. When she doesn't immediately respond he clarifies, "Who wrote the software?"

She glances to the empty space where the projection had been, then back to him, obviously confused. "As far as I know... the system produced it," she says at length, then shakes her head a little. "It's been in operation for as long as I can remember."

"But _they_, who's _they?_" Jack demands.

Gwyn Evans-Williams blinks. "They are the system," she says, as if it's obvious.

*

Jack's communicated with AI before, of course, but this is... different. Of course it's different; if Gwyn--and the last sixty years of archived data she's given him access to--is correct, then there's nothing _artificial_ about Ianto's intelligence right now.

But knowing that isn't really helping him with the struggle of just... _where to begin_. The occasional naughty instant messaging session aside, he and Ianto had always communicated best with their bodies rather than words. For the first time in several decades, the sharp stab of longing to have Ianto beside him, within touching distance, cuts through him.

Instead, Jack's sat alone in what passes for Torchwood Three's server room, the warmth of the air belying the depth at which it's nestled underground. Equipment hums blithely and persistently around him, massive cases with exposed circuitry and wires, lit up sporadically by keenly blinking lights.

He stares at the monitor in front of him for a few moments longer, heart racing, before clicking to pull up a word processing program. As good a place to start as any, if Ianto's infused in all of the Hub's tech.

The cursor winks at him.

Are you there? Jack types, feeling faintly ridiculous.

A moment later there's a flurry of animated activity in the corner of the window; a cartoon paperclip with disembodied eyeballs appears. Its similarly disembodied eyebrows waggle, and a speech bubble appears next to it.

It looks like you're trying to contact someone beyond the grave!

A laugh chokes out of Jack involuntarily, raw in his throat. "You're a bastard," he huffs. "A complete bastard."

An IM window flashes onto the screen.

`SYSTEM: WE CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW`

Jack breathes for long moments, trying to still the race of his cardiovascular system.

`Jack: Guess I don't really have to type anything, do I?`

`SYSTEM: NO`

"Can you see me, too?"

Another window pops up; this time it's Jack's own face, looking close and pale. He frowns and his face on the screen frowns; he waves his hand around until he can trace the camera back to a pinprick at the top of the computer monitor.

It's odd watching his own expression shift then from a desperate kind of hopefulness to the veneer of a smirk. It feels as comfortable and well-worn as his coat; he just doesn't usually get to _see_ himself do it.

"So," he says breezily. "Been waiting long?"

`SYSTEM: 09/07/2009`

The response appears instantly, and Jack swallows. Ianto never was a man of many words, but this is faintly ridiculous. "I see you've kept yourself occupied, though--you know they call you their butler?"

`SYSTEM: YES`

"It's the suits, I suppose. Well, suit singular. You could rig up personification software but not a bigger wardrobe?"

`SYSTEM: UNNECESSARY`

Jack can't look at himself any more. He wants to close his eyes and just shut it all out, but then he wouldn't be able to see the responses on the screen; instead he maximises the IM window, hiding the camera's stream from view.

"So, I'm assuming your next priority was constructing a virtual reality environment. We've gotta make up for lost time somehow, after all." It's easier to flirt into the camera when he doesn't have to look at himself. "What do you say?"

There's an actual pause this time before the response appears in the IM window. Jack wonders what that means; if it's the remaining scraps of Ianto's humanity that are taking longer to process the communication and response than the instantaneous turnaround of Mainframe's hardware. He wonders what it would take to get Ianto to stop referring to himself and Mainframe with the royal 'we'.

`SYSTEM: WE DON'T HAVE ANY GENITALS`

`SYSTEM: SIR`

Jack laughs, no echo at all to the sound in the closed intimacy of the server room, delight dancing up through his chest. "It's never really stopped me before," he says, catching his breath.

`SYSTEM: INDEED`

Jack forces his grin into a smirk again. He can practically _hear_ Ianto's sardonic tone through the single, monochromatic word. Although...

"Will the personification software work in here? Is the equipment set up? Gwyn said there's projection hardware installed in the Hub--"

"Yes."

Jack spins the chair around; Ianto is standing behind him, in the approximate centre of the room. Well, a projection of Ianto is, anyway. The projection is more solid, colour truer than that of his wrist strap; Jack could almost believe that he's more than just refracted light, but for the vague transparency. He can see the flashing green lights of the server through the black of Ianto's suit.

"You look... Younger."

"Our visual construction is based on data taken from a full body scan conducted on staff of Torchwood Three in May 2007," Ianto says, his voice not coming from the projection itself, but from one of the pieces of equipment lining the wall; speakers probably set up with the light source.

Jack remembers--Toshiko finally getting the device to work and Owen immediately co-opting it for the purpose of... Well, for satisfying his own gruesome curiosity, really, but it'd resulted in more extensive biological data of Torchwood staff being on file than mere blood samples and retinal scans.

Ianto smiles. He's still not quite meeting Jack's eyes--a persistent reminder that the projection of Ianto's in front of him is not in fact what Ianto's _seeing_ him with. He preempts Jack's next question.

"Mannerisms, body language and vocal inflection were integrated via the data provided by the CCTV library."

"Library?"

"Yes." Ianto pauses, blinks. "I recommend the restricted area, of which you have been granted classified access." Ianto gestures, and Jack turns back to the screen where a new window has appeared on the screen, a directory of video files. Jack leans in close enough to examine the thumbnails. Each depict he and Ianto _in flagrante_, time stamps dated between 2007 and 2009.

"Mr Jones," Jack breathes reverently. "You saucy bastard. No genitals, my arse!"

"Yes," Ianto says, and there's the tone Jack's been waiting for. "About that, sir. If you'll proceed to room 78a on level 12, you'll find the virtual reality environment we've been working on."

**Author's Note:**

> http://hope.dreamwidth.org/1526360.html


End file.
